Difficulty
Difficulty changes how hard one plays, generally by debuffing the player while buffing monsters to make the gameplay more challenging. In the Diablo series, there are three main difficulty levels, along with two sub levels. In the harder difficulties, the player will be able to get equipment and items that are much more powerful than on the previous difficulty, allowing the player to overcome some debuffs they may receive. In Nightmare and Hell, the player will lose experience when their character dies, if they're a Ladder character. Main Difficulty Types *Normal Normal is the easiest difficulty and the first one you start with when creating a new character. In Normal, the player is not debuffed and the monsters are not buffed, making it the basic difficulty type in Diablo. *Nightmare Nightmare is the next difficulty, which is harder to play. This difficulty is reached once the player defeats Diablo in Diablo I or Diablo II, with the Diablo II expansion requiring you to defeat Baal as well in the Normal dificulty. In Nightmare, the player is debuffed (generally by making skills and such 2/3's effective, along with decreasing resistances), while the monsters are buffed (generally by giving them more Life and increasing their damage). *Hell Hell is the last difficulty setting and the game's hardest. This difficulty is reached by defeating Diablo in Diablo I or Diablo II, with the Diablo II expansion requiring you to defeat Baal as well in the Nightmare difficulty. In Hell, the player is debuffed even more than nightmare with monsters being buffed even more than nightmare. The Hell difficulty allows the player to be able to access Uber Tristram in Diablo II, allowing something else for high-leveled players to do. Sub Types *Hardcore Hardcore is regarded by some players as the most realistic way to play. When the player dies in hardcore, the game ends for that character; it cannot be revived, however, if the player has the loot corpse option on, it can be looted by other players. When one allows their corpse to be looted, they may become a target of other players, so it is wise to only use the option when needed. To be able to create Hardcore characters, one must defeat Diablo or Baal in the Normal difficulty, allowing one to be able to create Hardcore characters. Some items that can be obtained by Ladder characters can't be obtained by Hardcore characters, but the same goes for some items that can be obtained by Hardcore characters can't be obtained by Ladder characters. *Softcore Softcore is the basic way to play. The player can die as many times as they want without having to worry about their character being permanently killed. When a player dies, they can go back to the place they died and retrieve their corpse, allowing them to gain back items they'd lost when they died. If a player leaves the game but still has a corpse, it can be easily reobtained in the Town of whatever act the player is in. Warning! If a single-player character leaves the game with items equiped but their corpse is still out, they will LOSE all the items on the corpse. Characters that are played online will receive the corpse which has the highest sale value to a merchant.